China's level of pollution renders all of America's activities meaningless, but that won't stop the Marxist left from bankrupting America's energy producers.

There has been no global warming for 17 years and 6 months -- according to the gold standard of temperature measurement known as the RSS satellite record -- but that won't stop the Marxist left from issuing thousands of new regulations every year.

What if we knew with certainty, with a true scientific consensus, that the world might continue as it is for 350 years, then end in heat death in the following 50 years? Nothing we did or did not do would affect the first 350 much. But, the heat death would happen on the far end if we did not cut in half our use of all fossil fuels within 10 years and maintain that strict limit for the indefinite future.

This is a social question, not an energy question. Even assuming that the fate of mankind was at stake 400 years from now, would people limit themselves, or would we enjoy the life that was possible for us now, rather than live in relative poverty and self deprivation?

My bet is that we would live it up and even raise our use of resources. We would have a party until the end, rather than live in deprivation hoping to eke out some survivalist solution.

If you agree, then what is all the fuss about a bit of global warming which is probably not even caused by human activity?

The PM2.5 Standard has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. The expanded title is Particulate Matter v2.5 Standard and it is concerned with the the amount of fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. See below for additional details.

"PM2.5 Standard Finalized

December 17, 2012

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its final rule revising particulate matter air quality standards on Dec. 17. The final rule lowers the primary annual fine particulate matter (PM2.5) standard from 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air (µg/m3) to 12 µg/m3."